Like many of the Chinese varieties, Meixian Hakka has few morphological variations. But we can still name a few.

Noun Marker (NM) /e/
In the citation forms of some nouns, they are suffixed with a “noun marker” /e/. This marker is missing in some other nouns. Sometimes a noun can either take or omit this marker, and the tone of that word changes accordingly. The marker itself does not bear tones. Note that only monosyllabic words can bear this suffix.

Nouns without NM

“nose”

“hand”

Nouns with NM

“rope”

“house”

Nouns that can either have or not have the NM

“stick”

“stick”
*Notice the tonal difference between these two forms of “stick”.

Compound Nouns

“roof”

“child”

Progressive Marker /dene/ and /de/

The progressive marker “dene” has a reduced form “de”.  The semantic meanings of these two progressive markers are slightly different. “dene” are always at the sentence final position, while “den” occurs sentence medially.

Here are a set of examples:

“They are eating (They have started eating, and the eating is ongoing)”

“They are eating”

3                               3rd person
PROG                    progressive